In some cases, a client accesses a resource on a network via a gateway. For example, the client may access resources provide by a server via the gateway. In one case, the client may send a request to a web server to obtain web-pages or other content, such as via a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request. The client request may include a Uniform Resource Locator to request content from a web-page or file located in a directory on a server. The server may include directories that are protected and unprotected. Different clients at different times may access the same resources of a server, such as the protected and unprotected directories.
Typically, a gateway or server authenticates a client on a server level. That is, a client is authenticated to access all the resources of the server, or the client is authenticated to access none of the resources of the server. However, some clients may only access the unprotected directories. In this case, in order to provide access to the unprotected directories, the client would need to be authenticated and thus giving access to the protected directories. In other cases, untrusted clients or clients connected via a virtual private network connection may try to access the protected directories. Yet, other clients may access both the protected and unprotected directories. In additional cases, different types of clients with different types of users may try to access the protected directories. Since the gateway provides a server level of authentication access to these resources, only all or nothing access can be provided in controlling these different clients and users.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide systems and methods to providing finer control of triggering client authentication policies based on client requests.